


Ships in a Bottle

by MorgoMoonscar



Category: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
Genre: Bonding, Harry before the memory wipe, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:14:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22749919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorgoMoonscar/pseuds/MorgoMoonscar
Summary: On Harry's second night in Martinaise, he splits some food with another drunk.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	Ships in a Bottle

Harry clutches two large shish kabobs in his hands as he marches down the dark Martinaise beach. He holds them like track batons with his elbows locked at right angles. The smell of a freshly waxed gym floor floats through his mind. It feels like a memory from some other man’s life. Now, Harry is piss drunk and his shoes are full of dirty, smelly sand.

"These fucking people dont even know shit. Fucking stuck up cooks. ‘Ooh, 'I'll give you a shish kabob if you fuck off.' They don't know shit! Im a fucking GOD. I solved the case! Didn’t need to talk to anyone. I didnt even NEED to look at the shitty body. Just hanging there like a big sack of shit. Jean that pig shit motherfucker. Fucking judging me." Harry spins on his heel and bellows, "FUCKING SHIT STAIN DETECTIVE.” 

Harry had hoped he had something better to yell, but his improv was thrown off by a blood alcohol content of 0.20. He shakes his head in vague disappointment, “Motherfucker. Motherfucking…" He stops suddenly. "Aw shit." Harry forgot to grab his Magnum bottle of Commodore Red from the Whirling. 

Anger shifts to sadness at the realization. "God.. Damn it…" Without the bottle in his hand he almost immediately starts missing Dora again. He had been so excited about the free food he hadn’t felt his drunkenness recede back into the danger zone. Fucked it up again after all the careful work he did to keep out of his frontal cortex all night. But now it was too late. His self-hatred was stretching at the track, folding itself into a perfectly poised starting position. He ached for a gun he pawned hours ago.

“Alright, alright. Don’t even start with me.” Harry heads off to find a telephone, his fingers twitching to dial that all too familiar number.

In the dark, drunk night, Harry gets turned around and ends up on the other end of the boardwalk. He stands at the base of a ramp. Ahead a section of the boardwalk juts out into the ocean on spindly, rotting legs. In the pale blue moonlight, the broken floorboards look like icy tectonic plates clashing and separating over the violent ocean. He looks up at the old walkway and forgets what he was doing. 

"Wait… Is that a guy?" Harry mutters to himself. He scrubs his eyes again and squints. Through his double vision he sees the unmistakable silhouette of a man standing at the end of the dock. On the opposite side of the railing. The fuzz of the alcohol turns to cold adrenaline.

"Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit." Harry starts walking up the boardwalk ramp. "What did we learn in... Crisis intervention… Right, right… okay… okay I'm not too drunk. I can do this."

Harry walks to the middle of the treacherous boardwalk and stops. He doesn't want to scare the man by suddenly starting to talk. But he's unsure if he could make his way over without accidentally killing himself first. Harry giggles at the thought of finally offing himself by total accident. The man turns around. 

"W-Who's there?!" His eyes are so wide Harry can see his whole life in them.

"No one. Wait." Nice, Harry. Get him talking and we'll remember our CIT later. "Uh. Hi."

"Hello."

"I'm really fucking drunk right now."

Even in the darkness Harry could see the stranger wince with secondhand embarrassment.

Fucking hell. Harry, get your shit together. “What are you doing out here… uh… tonight?"

"Isn't that obvious?" He says quietly. The man is shy, and as embarrassing as Harry's drunkenness is, he seems more ashamed at being found out. He had wanted the whole thing to be over quick and quiet without bothering anyone.

"Yeah.. Yeah. You wanna hop back over for a quick second?"

"Why would I do that?" Harry catches a slur at the end of his sentence. The guy is drunk, too. Based on the bottles piled around the bench, he might *somehow* be drunker than Harry. 

"Well. I don't know how you feel, but whenever I… tried to kill myself. It was usually privately. It's kinda weird having some hairy asshole gawking at you." That was a lie. Harry almost blew his brains out 3 times today in the middle of the Whirling.

The man looks down at the water again. His shoulders relax a little and it looks like his hands are going slack. No no no! Wrong thing! Wrong thing!

"Wait!" Harry yells loud enough that the man instinctively grabs hold of the rail. His body is happy to take any reason to keep living; to keep the meat and sinew rolling along.

"I… I have two shish kabobs!" Harry holds them up in his hands.

"What? What the hell did you just say?" The man almost sounds annoyed.

"I have two beef shish kabobs. How about you hop over here and have one with me. Let's just eat and talk for a second, and then I'll fuck off. Okay?" 

A gust of cold air blows over the boardwalk and the two men shiver in it. Harry's heart hammers as he pleads with whatever good beings were out there that the man's grip wouldn't slip. The cold and the promise of food seems to tip the man's mind in Harry's favor. He gingerly climbs back over the railing and stumbles over to a bench next to the pile of bottles. His legs tremble from the aftershocks of the height he was hanging over. 

Harry lurches over, his nerves singing with relief and fear in equal measure. He sits beside the man on the side near the ocean to block the wind. He holds out the kabob and passes it into the man's waiting hand. His hand is red with cold. They tear open the wrappers and the smell of grease and roasted vegetables rises into the air around them.

"Damn, that’s good." The man rips at the first nugget of meat on the stick.

"Yeah, would you believe I got them for free?"

"No! How?"

"I was hanging out in the restaurant you know, chatting with the locals and all. And the cook comes outta the kitchen and says 'You goddamn drunk! I'll give you these kebobs if you fuck off'"

Completely stupefied, the man looks at Harry and bursts out in wheezy, teary laughter. Harry joins him, his laugh a brassy cadence floating over the other man's. 

"Shit. I didn't know they were giving out free food to assholes around here," the man wiped a tear from his face.

"Yeah man, I was as surprised as you are. You'll have to visit there sometime. Jamrock Kabob or something. All I did was stumble in drunk and sing for 15 minutes."

"Sweet Dolores, that's it?! I didn't know the shithead bar was so low around here." Harry laughs at that and notes the warmer expression on the man's face. He probably hasn't heard an honest laugh in a while. 

“Who even are you, man?"

"I'm Tequila Sunset."

"Fuck you." He smiles.

"I'm Harry DuBois."

"Victor Méjean."

"A pleasure."

"Of course." An awkward pause. Harry finishes his kabob in minutes. Victor picks at the first pepper and second hunk of meat in the silence. Three more lumps sit on the stick like ellipses.

"You know, I have to ask."

Victor looks up at Harry sullenly. He had half hoped the silence would last forever and he'd get to relish in the animal comfort of eating a hot meal.

"Yeah. I just… I thought it'd be a long story, but really. It's so simple. I-- No. Everyone in my life I care about… Me being here left 'em worse off. Can't find work for my wife. Can't be sober for my kids." The man shrivels with despair. The kebob seems huge in his meek hand. He twirls it between his palms and sighs.

“I have two girls and they're so fucking smart, ya know? Not like me." Victor looks down at his worn hands and fiddles with a cracking hangnail. 

His eyes get glassy as he formulates his thoughts, "They got it all from my wife. The smartest person I know. And I knocked her up before she could even finish school. She been doing dishes and waitin' tables ever since. She works all night, and then she comes home to my sorry drunk ass. If I’m even there at all."

Victor takes a ferocious bite out of the kebob and continues with his mouth full. "The sickest fucking thing is we both know she could have been anything. Done anything. She remembers everything she’s ever read. She read this book about birds you see. And she still knows all their names and shit. She just… deserves more than a sad, pathetic drunk that can't even help pay rent."

His face crumples under the memory of newspaper curtains and onion stews. "Can't even give our daughters a good fucking meal." Victor's mouth wobbles as he looks down at his half-eaten kebab with disgust and guilt.

"Hey. It's okay." Harry pats the man's back. He is a quiet crier. His shoulders buck with sobs. A droplet of snot hangs off the tip of his nose and refracts the blue moonlight.

"Look. I don't know your life, and hell I haven't even ever been married." Harry pushes down the rising tide of bitterness in his heart at bringing up her again. "But your wife, your daughters, are infinitely happier having you alive than dead."

"That's… There's no way that's true. I piss away their money. And I'm not ever there and when I *am* home. I-"

"That and a million more things could be true, but if you were dead there's no chance you could ever be better, Victor. They're still hoping right now that you'll come home and be the man they need. Your family hasn't sent you away. You've left." 

"When I’m there it’s worse. At least out here they can’t see how I am.” He looks at Harry and sniffles, “I just don't know how to stop. I don't think I can anymore." A stab of pain lances down Harry's chest. He squeezes his eyes shut. He takes a deep breath and looks back at Victor's face. 

The two men look at each other and a sensation similar to deja vu passes between them. A universal pain hangs heavy in their heart. They yearn to return to the past or the sea, anywhere that takes broken objects and makes them new again. To be sea glass smoothed and cleaned in the waves.

Victor looks away after a moment and eats another block of meat. The last piece stares at Harry with desperation.

"Victor, I don't want to sound like an ass. But, I've been where you are. I can't tell you that it gets better, because it hasn't yet." Harry stares down at the empty stick clenched in his swollen hands,"But I honestly think you do have a chance. If I could be you again, back when I still had someone... I would try to stop it. Talk it out. Or at the very least I wish to God I had gone home and enjoyed being with her while I still could."

Harry's eyes slide over to Victor's hands. They're both closed around the bare kabob stick. He rolls the empty stick for a moment until he comes to a decision within himself. With a quick movement he breaks it in half and rolls the wrapper around it. "My younger brother always said that breaking the stick was good luck."

Harry smiles and breaks his stick over his knee. Victor passed the remains of the shish kabob over to Harry. Dropping them in the garbage can, Harry looks at a still full bottle of Commodore Red loitering by the trash. Victor follows his gaze and looks at him.

"You can take that if you want. I'm okay now." He sets his jaw and meets Harry's eyes, "I'm going to sober up a little more and start walking back." Harry studies the man's face. He seems different. He means it.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, that's the last of the alcohol. Rest is empty. I'm going to try and make a fresh start. I've said that before.." But he's never had this close a call. He could have died tonight and forever been a miserable drunk in the eyes of his wife. Now though, he could almost imagine someday being different. 

Harry smiles at him. Maybe… He could make a fresh start, too. They stand there for a moment, feeling the world turning around them, relishing in the blood pumping through their veins. The breath flowing out of them in white clouds. Victor breaks it by opening a pack of gum and taking the last three strips out. Victor offers him a stick and Harry flinches.

Turning with the Commodore Red in his hand, Harry looks back at Victor for the last time and raises the bottle to him. Victor smiles from the bench and gives him a mock salute.

As Harry walks away from the boardwalk, he stops to stand over one of the many trash cans of Martinaise. Holding the bottle on its rim, Harry wills himself to let go and allow the shining liquid to capsize and shatter into the garbage below. But he can't yet. Harry needs to make sure he wouldn’t see her in his dreams again. He could make a new start in the morning; like Victor would.


End file.
